Effectively serving and meeting the needs of children and
youth with serious emotional disturbance (SED) and their families is a national concern.
The necessity of addressing the needs of these children and youth has become increasingly
apparent. Failure to do so threatens the success of the nation's educational objectives
(e.g., GOALS 2000) and limits life-long opportunities for many individuals. The following
data suggest the magnitude of the problem:

Academic Outcomes. Students with SED have lower grades than
any other group of students with disabilities. They fail more courses and they more
frequently fail minimum competency examinations than do other students with disabilities;
they also are retained at grade level more often at the end of the school year. High
school students with SED have an average grade point average of 1.7 (on a four-point
scale), compared to 2.0 for all students with disabilities and 2.6 for all students.
Forty-four percent received one or more failing grades in their most recent school year
(compared to 31 percent for all students with disabilities). Of those who took minimum
competency tests (22 percent were exempted), 63 percent failed some part of the test.

Graduation Rates. Forty-two percent of youth with SED earn a
high school diploma, as opposed to 50 percent of all youth with disabilities and 76
percent of similarly aged youth in the general population.

School Placement. Eighteen percent of students with SED are
educated outside of their local schools, compared to 6 percent of all students with
disabilities. Of those in their local schools, fewer than 17 percent are educated in
regular classrooms, in contrast to 33 percent of all students with disabilities.

Dropout Rates. Forty-eight percent of students with SED drop
out of grades 9 through 12, as opposed to 30 percent of all students with disabilities and
only 24 percent of all high school students. (Another 8 percent of students with
disabilities,including students with SED, drop out before grade 9.)

School Absenteeism. Students with SED miss more days of
school per year (an average of 18 days) than do students in any other disability category.

Encounters with the Juvenile Justice System. Twenty percent
of students with SED are arrested at least once before they leave school as opposed to 9
percent of students with disabilities and 6 percent of all students. Fifty-eight percent
of youth with SED are arrested within five years of leaving school, as opposed to 30
percent of all students with disabilities. Of those students with SED who drop out of
school, 73 percent are arrested within five years of leaving school.

Identification Rates of Students of Varying Socio-Economic
Backgrounds. The rates of identification of children and youth with SED vary across
racial, cultural, gender, and socioeconomic lines. Although African-American and white
students represent 16 and 68 percent of the school age enrollment respectively, they
represent 22 and 71 percent of the students classified as SED. On the other hand,
Hispanic-Americans and Asian-Americans represent 12 and 3 percent of the school-aged
population respectively, but only 6 and 1 percent of the students classified as SED. Data
also suggest that students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds are over-represented and
female students underrepresented among those identified with serious emotional
disturbance.

Compared to all students with disabilities: (1) students
with SED are more likely to be placed in restrictive settings and are more likely to drop
out of school; (2) their families are more likely to be blamed for the student's
disability and are more likely to make tremendous financial sacrifices to secure services
for their children; and (3) their teachers and aides are more likely to seek reassignment
or leave their positions.

In 1990, Congress authorized a new program for children and
youth with SED under Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
IDEA mandates provision of a "free appropriate public education" (FAPE) for
children with disabilities. IDEA also mandated a participatory planning process, involving
multiple stakeholders in the development of program goals, objectives, strategies, and
priorities for all programs administered by the Office of Special Education Programs
(OSEP), including the new program for children and youth with SED.

In order to help frame and guide the planning process, OSEP
defined its mission as "Achieving Better Results for Individuals with
Disabilities," and identified four initial goals to achieve that mission. These goals
were:

To provide and maintain an adequate number of qualified
personnel;

To develop the capacity to ready systems to meet the needs
of changing populations;

To secure and expand access and inclusion for children with
disabilities; and

To identify measures and improve outcomes for individuals
with disabilities.

OSEP's Division of Innovation and Development (DID), which
administers the SED program, also developed mission and vision statements to guide
programs for students with SED. The Mission is: Achieving better results for students
with serious emotional disturbance. The Vision is: A reorientation and national
preparedness to foster the emotional development and adjustment of children and youth with
or at risk of developing serious emotional disturbance, as the critical foundation for
realizing their potential at school, work, and in the community.

OSEP used the initial goals, mission and vision statements
to implement a strategic planning process that had three objectives: (1) to develop a
national agenda that would focus the attention of educators, parents, advocates, and
professionals from a variety of disciplines on what must be done to encourage, assist, and
support our nation's schools in their efforts to achieve better outcomes for children and
youth with serious emotional disturbance; (2) to provide recommendations for DID
initiatives and funding opportunities aimed at providing better outcomes for children and
youth with SED; and (3) to provide background for the IDEA-authorized program for children
and youth with SED. This planning process incorporated one-on-one interviews, literature
reviews, focus groups, stakeholder meetings, an interactive national teleconference,
presentations, and the solicitation of oral and written responses.

Significantly improving results for children and youth with
SED requires a vision of transformed service systems, reoriented professional attitudes,
and an emphasis on positive outcomes. Toward these ends, OSEP and the participants in the
planning process identified the following seven interdependent strategic targets:

THE STRATEGIC TARGETS

Expand Positive Learning Opportunities and Results

Strengthen School and Community Capacity

Value and Address Diversity

Collaborate with Families

Promote Appropriate Assessment

Provide Ongoing Skill Development and Support

Create Comprehensive and Collaborative Systems

Underlying the seven targets are several key assumptions
that embody an understanding that a flexible and proactive continuum of services must be
built around the needs of children with SED and their families. Furthermore, services must
not only be available, but must be sustained and comprehensive, and must collaboratively
engage families, service providers, and children and youth with serious emotional
disturbance. Finally, both the needs of these children and increasing demographic
diversity of our nation call for cross-agency, school- and community-based relationships
that are characterized by mutual respect and accountability - with the child always in
focus. Accordingly, OSEP identified the following three cross-cutting themes that reflect
this understanding:

Collaborative efforts must extend to initiatives that
prevent emotional and behavioral problems from developing or escalating;

Services must be provided in a culturally sensitive and
respectful manner; and

Services must empower all stakeholders and maintain a
climate of possibility and accountability.

The strategic targets developed for the national agenda for
children and youth with serious emotional disturbance are linked. Each target can be best
understood and implemented in concert with the other targets and in the context of a
collaborative process, as is suggested in Figure 1, "National Reorientation and
Preparedness to Achieve Better Results." Achieving successful outcomes for children
and youth with SED depends on pursuing and attaining all of the targets listed in Figure
2.

FIGURE 1 is not currently available

FIGURE 2NATIONAL AGENDA FOR ACHIEVING BETTER RESULTS FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH WITH SERIOUS
EMOTIONAL DISTURBANCE

To foster the provision of engaging, useful, and positive
learning opportunities. These opportunities should be result-driven and should acknowledge
as well as respond to the experiences and needs of children and youth with serious
emotional disturbance.

To encourage culturally competent and linguistically
appropriate exchanges and collaborations among families, professionals, students, and
communities. These collaborations should foster equitable outcomes for all students and
result in the identification and provision of services that are responsive to issues of
race, culture, gender, and social and economic status.

To foster collaborations that fully include family members
on the team of service providers that implements family focused services to improve
educational outcomes. Services should be open, helpful, culturally competent, accessible
to families, and school- as well as community-based.

To promote practices ensuring that assessment is integral
to the identification, design, and delivery of services for children and youth with SED.
These practices should be culturally appropriate, ethical, and functional.

To foster the enhancement of knowledge, understanding, and
sensitivity among all who work with children and youth with and at risk of developing
serious emotional disturbance. Support and development should be ongoing and aim at
strengthening the capacity of families, teachers, service providers, and other
stakeholders to collaborate, persevere, and improve outcomes for children and youth with
SED.

To promote systems change resulting in the development of
coherent services built around the individual needs of children and youth with and at risk
of developing serious emotional disturbance. These services should be family-centered,
community-based, and appropriately funded.

To foster the provision of engaging, useful, and
positive learning opportunities. These opportunities should be result-driven and should
acknowledge as well as respond to the experiences and needs of children and youth with
serious emotional disturbance.

The poor outcomes achieved by students with serious
emotional disturbance cannot be successfully addressed by focusing on these students
alone. Their poor success rates and frequent removal from mainstream classes and regular
schools reflect school and community factors, as well as the nature of their emotional
needs. Often student behavior escalates out of control and academic failure occurs before
schools intervene. Intervention is often limited to external control, with little
attention given to internal development of self-control, self-management, self-advocacy,
and conflict resolution skills.

Students with SED must be engaged in culturally responsive,
student-centered opportunities to learn, marked by high expectations and tailored to their
individual needs. Curricula, instruction, and extra-curricular activities must build
academic and social skills that enable students to sustain appropriate learning and
behavior. School- and community-based learning must be better coordinated so that these
students acquire and maintain the academic and social skills which will make them
literate, productive, and responsible members of their communities.

This target supports coordinated initiatives that improve
the effectiveness of teachers, families, schools, and other agencies to teach and
contribute to the academic, social, and emotional development of students with SED and
those at risk for developing SED. These students should have access to challenging
curricula, effective teaching, and robust learning experiences that enhance their
academic, vocational, and social skills. Proactive approaches emphasize prevention, early
intervention, and learner-centeredness. Collaborative learning environments respond to the
needs of all students, teach both academic and social skills, and build on each student's
strengths and interests. The target calls for providing opportunities for success that
will enable students with SED to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes essential
for educational, social, and workplace achievement.

To foster initiatives that strengthen the capacity of
schools and communities to serve students with serious emotional disturbance in the least
restrictive environments appropriate.

Students with behavioral problems and serious emotional
disturbance are often removed from regular schools and general education settings. Their
removal reflects many factors, including the current school environment and the need to
provide complex and comprehensive services across many service delivery systems.
Placements made out of neighborhood schools and communities are often very costly to
communities and disruptive to families. In addition, these placements may prevent many
students from developing the academic and social competencies they require to use
throughout their lives.

This target calls for serving children and youth with SED
in the least restrictive and most appropriate environments. In particular, and as far as
possible, it means developing the capacity to successfully integrate these students into
neighborhood schools and regular classrooms. To make integration and transitions work,
students with SED and the teachers who work with them require support and resources.
Educational systems must be prepared to facilitate integration and smooth the transition
of students back into their own homes, schools, and communities.

This strategic target calls for the development and the
expansion of initiatives that improve the readiness and capacity of general education
settings to educate and provide needed services to students with SED. This target supports
early intervention, prevention, and pre-referral initiatives such as early screening,
teacher consultation, and mainstream assistance teams. It supports active collaborations
among regular and special educators, service providers, and families that enable these
students to learn and participate in activities with their peers. Existing initiatives
that address these goals include: providing field-based training to regular educators;
using special educators as consultants; reducing teacher-student ratios; implementing
non-traditional methods of dispute resolution; adopting approaches to discipline that keep
students in class; teaming special educators in classrooms with regular educators; and
bringing mental health specialists into schools.

To encourage culturally competent and linguistically
appropriate exchanges and collaborations among families, professionals, students, and
communities. These collaborations should foster equitable outcomes for all students and
result in the identification and provision of services that are responsive to issues of
race, culture, gender, and social and economic status.

The rates of identification, placement, and achievement of
children and youth with emotional and behavioral problems vary across racial, cultural,
gender, and socioeconomic dimensions. Incomplete understanding of differences can lead to
the misidentification and inappropriate treatment of children. To avoid misidentification
and inappropriate treatment, diversity must be addressed and valued. To value diversity is
to acknowledge, understand, and appreciate the characteristics of different cultures and
different groups of people. To address diversity is to develop the ability to work
successfully with people of diverse backgrounds when designing and implementing services
for children with serious emotional disturbance.

This target calls for approaches that improve the capacity
of individuals and systems to respond skillfully, respectfully, and effectively to
students, families, teachers, and other providers in a manner that recognizes, affirms,
and values their worth and dignity. To accomplish this, the target supports collaborations
among families, professionals, students, and communities that identify and provide what
are defined as culturally competent services to address the needs of children and youth
with serious emotional disturbance.

Cultural competencies describe the interpersonal skills and
attitudes that enable individuals to increase their understanding and appreciation of the
rich and fluid nature of culture and of differences and similarities within, among, and
between cultures and individuals. Furthermore, cultural competency is not merely a set of
tools learned at one point in time and applied over and over again. Rather, it is a
process that educators and other service providers must learn to adapt to each new
individual encounter.

Culturally competent approaches recognize the cultural
grounding of teachers' and service providers' views, behaviors, and methods. These
approaches also recognize the power of language and attend to the communicative styles of
students and their families. Culturally competent approaches address culturally based
definitions of family and networks. They view family and community as critical parts of a
student's support system. Such approaches also demonstrate a willingness and ability to
draw on community-based values, traditions, customs, and resources. Pre-referral and
preventive approaches that are culturally competent and linguistically appropriate
recognize and nurture the strengths - individual and cultural - that students bring to
school.

To foster collaborations that fully include family
members on the team of service providers that implements family focused services to
improve educational outcomes. Services should be open, helpful, culturally competent,
accessible to families, and school- as well as community-based.

Families represent a child's most intimate support system,
and yet familial support and participation in service systems have historically not been a
priority. In fact, families have often been held responsible for their children's
problems. Today, families of children and youth with SED often serve as their children's
advocates and case managers, negotiating between and among the education, health, mental
health, substance abuse, welfare, youth services, and correctional systems.

Family support services are frequently a key factor in
successfully addressing the needs of children and youth with SED. The degree of family
support is especially related to the success of least restrictive placements, as success
may depend upon a family's ability to obtain the educational, mental health, and other
services required to maintain a child in the home. Training that enables family members to
advocate effectively for these students is also an important element in successful
placement of students with SED. To improve outcomes for these children and youth, service
providers must collaborate with families and support the active participation of families
in planning and evaluation.

Collaborating with families and strengthening their access
to required services is central to realizing the goal of implementing appropriate,
integrated services across education, mental health, and other systems. Service providers
should seek and facilitate active parental involvement when planning assessments and when
determining what services to provide. The object of this strategic target is to reorient
family-school interactions to build a partnership in which service planning reflects the
input of families' goals, knowledge, culture, and, in some cases, need for additional
services.

Any collaborative relationship should be marked by a
demonstration of respect and compassion for family members; an understanding and an
accommodation of different styles of social interaction; the use of straightforward
language; creative outreach efforts; respect for families' cultures and experiences;
providing families with crucial information and viable options; and the scheduling of IEP
meetings at convenient times and places for families, care givers, and surrogates. In
addition, families may need respite care and day care to meet the needs of their other
children. Necessary services may also include counseling, training, support groups, and
immediate crisis intervention to enable families to work and live with children and youth
with SED.

Examples of family-responsive services include: (1)
designating a single person to coordinate services for the family; (2) establishing single
point of entry intake procedures for all services; (3) staffing technical assistance
centers with family members; (4) expanding the role of families and care givers at IEP
meetings and placing a family report on the agenda for the meetings; and (5) including
families in outreach planning and cultural competency training.

To promote practices ensuring that assessment is
integral to the identification, design, and delivery of services for children and youth
with SED. These practices should be culturally appropriate, ethical, and functional.

Appropriate, ongoing, cost-effective, and practical
assessment is essential to improving outcomes for children and youth with serious
emotional disturbance. Screening, monitoring, and assessment can identify children at
risk, support preventive interventions that may reduce the need for formal identification
at a later time, augment planning, and monitor the implementation of comprehensive
services. Culturally competent, linguistically appropriate, multi-disciplinary assessments
that involve families can help teachers build on student strengths and address the
changing developmental needs of students with SED. Ongoing assessments that focus on the
student's environment (including the school) can enable teachers and service providers to
prevent emotional problems from intensifying, thus avoiding the need for more protracted
and expensive interventions in the future.

The efficacy of service depends upon ongoing and continuous
assessment that best captures a child's changing developmental needs. This target supports
initiatives that provide for early identification and assessment tied to services rather
than to labels. Identification and assessment frequently come too late and lead to the
inappropriate placement, labelling, and treatment of students with emotional and
behavioral problems.

This target addresses concerns that current assessments
fail to identify the support and modifications necessary for the successful integration or
re-integration of students with SED into regular education settings. The target supports
the early screening and identification of children with emotional or behavioral problems
by a multidisciplinary team of professionals and parents so that these children's problems
are addressed before a cycle of failure, truancy, dropping out, and delinquency is
established. This target supports practical and timely assessments that enable teachers
and schools to use appropriate strategies and to assure that interventions are producing
desired results.

Further, this target encourages the development of
sensitive identification and assessment procedures to meet the needs of all children and
prevent the exacerbation of emotional and behavioral problems. These procedures should be
accurate, linguistically appropriate, and culturally fair and should provide necessary
information to enable educators to provide appropriate educational experiences for all
students with emotional and behavioral disorders. The target supports initiatives that use
culturally appropriate and functional assessment data to strengthen the capacity of
general education teachers and schools to effectively integrate and teach students with
emotional and behavioral problems.

To foster the enhancement of knowledge, understanding,
and sensitivity among all who work with children and youth with and at risk of developing
serious emotional disturbance. Support and development should be ongoing and aim at
strengthening the capacity of families, teachers, service providers, and other
stakeholders to collaborate, persevere, and improve outcomes for children and youth with
SED.

Improving outcomes for students with SED will require new
skills, approaches, and collaborations among all who work with these children and youth.
Teachers and professionals frequently report feeling isolated and unsupported by
colleagues and families. In addition, the need for comprehensive services coupled with the
complex nature of serious emotional disturbance may create a gap between what is learned
in teacher training programs and what teachers face in the classroom and in the school.
Special and general educators as well as other service providers also require ongoing
skill development and training that will enable them to work effectively with one another.

This strategic target provides for the ongoing support and
professional development of teachers and other service providers in order to: (1) increase
their capacity to teach and work effectively, (2) reduce their sense of isolation, and (3)
enhance their commitment to meeting the needs of students with SED. Professional
development for teachers and other service providers should extend to families in some
cases so that all those working with children with SED can develop new skills, acquire
knowledge of promising intervention techniques, and become aware of new innovations and
practices.

An example of one strategy likely to support attainment of
this target is that of field-based workshops promoting collaboration among families,
teachers, aides, administrators, and mental health professionals. Well-managed workshops
give participants the opportunity to share information and experiences regarding the
diversity, the complexity of needs, and the potential for learning and growth of students
with SED. Additionally, strategies that foster collaboration among teachers, families, and
service providers can be effective pre-referral, early identification, and prevention
tools. Other strategies may include mentoring, subsidized training time, and ongoing
field-based training and consultation.

The implementation of this target will provide support for
the other strategic targets, particularly those calling for collaborative relationships
and culturally sensitive and competent services. It also will support the reorientation of
professional roles and a preparedness to effectively serve children and youth with SED;
and it will foster the development of attitudes and skills that are congruent with
improved opportunities and outcomes for all children and youth with SED. Finally,
achieving this target will provide ongoing support and professional development for
teachers and other professionals, thus reducing their sense of isolation and fostering
their commitment and persistence in meeting the challenging needs of the children and
youth whom they serve.

To promote systems change resulting in the development
of coherent services built around the individual needs of children and youth with and at
risk of developing serious emotional disturbance. These services should be
family-centered, community-based, and appropriately funded.

As many children and youth with serious emotional
disturbance and their families attempt to maneuver through a fragmented, confusing, and
overlapping aggregation of services in education, mental health, health, substance abuse,
welfare, youth services, correctional, and vocational agencies, they encounter and must
endure competing definitions, regulations, and jurisdictions in a delivery system marked
by formalism, categorical funding, and regulatory road blocks. To effectively plan,
administer, finance, and deliver the necessary educational, mental health, social, and
other support services to students and their families, coordination among the numerous
agencies involved must increase and improve.

Systemic change is needed to enhance regional and community
capacity to the point where those involved can meet all of the needs of children and youth
with SED. Simultaneously, systems must be developed that can bring services into the
child's environment, whether it be the home, school, or community. Furthermore, to achieve
the desired outcomes for children and youth with SED, public and private funding streams
must be coordinated.

This strategic target supports initiatives to help generate
comprehensive and seamless systems of appropriate, culturally competent, mutually
reinforcing services. This target envisions systems that are more than linkages of
agencies. It aims instead at developing new systems, built around the needs of students,
families, and communities - systems that coordinate services, articulate responsibility,
and provide system-wide and agency-level accountability.

Local systems should remain school- and community-based so
that they can respond to local needs and reflect the cultures of the communities they
serve. Systems should be outcome oriented, employ uniform definitions, provide
individualized and family-centered services, and respond promptly, flexibly, and
effectively during any crisis. Within a coordinated, collaborative system, services follow
needs, and funds follow children and their families. Students and their families should be
able to enter the entire system from any point at which specific services are first
offered. Finally, while the new systems should be community-based, policy must be
coordinated at the state and national levels. Such coordination will eliminate
bureaucratic road blocks, establish and reinforce commitment among agencies, and extend
initiatives that coordinate previously non- or unaligned services and blend funding
streams, both public and private.

Promising approaches toward systems development have
addressed the need to nurture collaboration, innovation, and an outcome-oriented approach
to planning and decision making. Some initiatives have done so successfully by involving
children, teachers, and advocates in planning and evaluating new systems. Other efforts
have provided policy makers with an opportunity for hands-on decision making regarding
specific students so that they can understand the need to blend services and funding.
Still other promising approaches provide common training and workshops to families,
educators, human service workers, administrators, board members, and advocates in order to
support collaboration, nourish transdisciplinary orientations, and sustain local networks.